A Very Merry Christmas
by StarryNight101
Summary: The Doctor and Rose have exciting plans for the holidays, but some awfully persistent aliens get in their way. 10/Rose, Christmas-themed fluff.


**AN: Just a little Christmas fluff for the Doctor and Rose. I always imagined it as 10/Rose (which is why it's in that category) but actually it could just as easily be 9/Rose or even 10.5/Rose.**

**Anyways, for those of you waiting for an update on 100 Song for 100 Moments, I swear it's coming soon. I have been so insanely busy, but I'm hoping to get an update out before my break ends.**

**As always, please review and let me know what you think. :) I hope you all had a merry Christmas, and for those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, then I hope you had a merry December 25th.**

* * *

The day started out just like any other. The Doctor and Rose had big plans, as it was their first Christmas as an official couple. Jackie, of course, had wanted them to spend it with her, but they had other ideas.

The Doctor wanted to take Rose to the planet Faranmara, a winter wonderland during its cold season. It was also renowned for its spectacular ice shows, and he knew that in the year 26010, there happened to be a very fantastic meteor shower during the ice shower, creating light on the usually dark planet.

But, in the end, neither Christmas at Jackie's nor Christmas at Faranmara happened the way they thought it would.

* * *

"Hey, Doctor?" Rose poked her head into the console room of the TARDIS. "Mum just called me. She says she insists we spend Christmas with her, or else she's never speaking to us again."

"That would be quite pleasant, actually," the Doctor muttered as he fiddled around with the TARDIS. "Ow!" A wire he'd been holding sparked, and he pulled his hand away, giving it a glare.

"Serves you right," Rose said, smirking. "Karma. Anyways, she's my mum, and while I'd really rather have a Christmas just with you, she's extremely persistent. And unlike you, I'd actually like to have a relationship with her."

"Well, we're still not having Christmas with her," the Doctor said. "Don't you want to see the ice show on Faranmara?"

"I do," Rose said. "But can't we maybe accommodate my mum a bit? I mean, you have a time machine."

"But Rose," the Doctor said his tone bordering on a whine. "I want it to be special."

"I do, too," Rose said. "Really. But I find it hard to believe we can't come to a compromise. You just don't like Jackie."

"Weell…" the Doctor said, looking a tad sheepish at that last part. "I don't dislike her. I just find that woman terrifying, quite frankly."

"Aw," Rose said. "The big scary Doctor, the Oncoming Storm who has fought Daleks and Cybermen and all sorts of things that want to kill us, and you're afraid of my mum?"

"She is a very scary woman," the Doctor defended himself. "And she slapped me. That sort of thing isn't normal!"

Rose tried to suppress a smile. "How about I tell her we'll be there for Christmas morning to open some gifts, and admire her decorating. Just the morning. And after that we can head of to Farenmerar or whatever its called."

"Faranmara," the Doctor corrected her. "And fine. I don't see myself winning this argument, you're too much like Jackie."

Rose smiled that smile the Doctor loved, with her tongue poking out between her teeth, and he smiled back.

* * *

They landed in London, early 21st century early on Christmas morning. However, as soon as they arrived, they could tell something was off. Neither of them could put their finger on it, but something was definitely not right. The Doctor checked and re-checked the coordinates, but everything was correct.

Passing it off as paranoia, a hazard of too much time traveling through time and space, and fighting off aliens, they decided not to worry about it. They walked hand in hand to Jackie's, the Doctor telling Rose all about the planet Faranmara.

"So, anyways, the ice shows are simply spectacular. The Faranmarans, the natives of the planet, they put their whole life work into this. They have 6 arms, which come in very handy when creating the ice sculptures. It allows them to create these amazingly elaborate ice sculptures. Also, they have these long, thin claws, which work excellently as blades for carving the ice.

"During the wintertime, it's dark all day long. There's no light for months on end, and the planet is freezing. But on the winter solstice, in the middle of winter, they have this ice show. And the planet's most talented ice workers come out and spend three days working on the sculptures.

"Did you know that the planet as an extremely prestigious academy which trains ice workers? Anyways, the all compete, and everyone works hard to bring light to the three-day festival, and it's so magical. Oh, and… Rose?" he trailed off as he realized Rose wasn't listening. And that Rose, in fact, wasn't there.

* * *

The Doctor looked around in a panic, hoping to spot Rose somewhere. But she was gone. The streets were mostly empty, and so she would have been easy to spot. And something in the back of his mind just told him that she was gone. He rushed to Jackie's, hoping that she might be there.

"Jackie?" he called, bursting through the door.

"Oh there you are!" Jackie said. "I was just getting some things ready. Where's Rose?"

"She's not here?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, of course she's not, you idiot!" Jackie said. "You were with her! Now where's my daughter?"

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted.

"Hold on a minute," Jackie said. "What do you mean 'you don't know?' WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?"

"Just… calm down a minute," the Doctor said, eyeing the rolling pin in Jackie's hand suspiciously.

"You were supposed to take care of her, you said you'd keep her safe!" Jackie was shaking her rolling pin in his face. "But now what have you done? You've gone and _lost_ her, you great big alien… idiot!"

"I'm going to get her back, I promise," the Doctor said. "But I need your help. Has anything weird been happening lately?"

"I don't know…" Jackie said. "Oh, well, there was this one thing. People have been disappearing. At first, I thought it was just lots of people going out of town, what with all the disasters that usually happen Christmas in London. But then it didn't make sense. People I knew were leaving without saying goodbye, and they would leave their stuff behind."

"Jackie, how long as this been going on for?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't know!" she said. "A few days? A week? I only noticed because it was so many people."

The Doctor sighed. It wasn't much to go on, but it was something. He paced down the streets of London, wondering what he could do. He was puzzled why there wasn't some sort of obvious transport somewhere. A spaceship, or a time portal, or just something. People couldn't just disappear randomly.

Suddenly, an idea came to him. He rushed back to the street where Rose had disappeared. He slowly walked up and down, scanning with his sonic screwdriver. Finally he found something. His sonic screwdriver was beeping like mad, which meant he'd found what he was looking for.

Right there in the middle of the street, there was a slight ripple in the space-time continuum, which meant that something had disrupted it. And that something was likely a teleport, which meant if he could find a way to trace it, he could find Rose. After carefully scanning the area, he finally found a signal. It seemed like it was coming from nearby, about 5 miles away from where the Doctor was.

He ran to the TARDIS, set in the coordinates, and headed off to rescue Rose.

* * *

Rose, meanwhile, was just coming to, her head groggy. She recognized the familiar symptoms of traveling through a teleport without a capsule. She slowly got to her feet, fighting the nausea and dizziness she felt. She knew it would pass in a few minutes, but it was certainly unpleasant.

"You there!" a voice said.

Rose looked around, and saw what she could only assume was an alien. It was running towards her, followed by several armed guards.

"Oh, hello," Rose said cheerily, hoping they were friendly. "Merry Christmas."

The alien in front stared at her as if she'd spoken a foreign language. Then again, maybe she had. Sometimes if the Doctor was doing repairs on the TARDIS he messed up the translation. Still, she could hear what the alien was saying, so she had probably spoken in the proper language.

"What is this Christmas you speak of?" the main alien said. Rose had a feeling it was male, but she really couldn't say. It was just a guess.

"Human pagan tradition," one of the alien guards said, glaring at Rose. Or at least, Rose assumed it was a glare. It was a little hard to tell, as its eyes didn't actually move. She just felt a glare.

"Why is the human not with the other prisoners?" one of the other alien guards said.

Definitely not friendly, then, Rose thought.

The main alien, who had wondered about Christmas, seemed to suddenly remember why it/he was there. "Get going," it/he ordered.

The more Rose thought about it, the more she was really quite sure it was male. Rose slowly walked towards the aliens, hoping for a chance to escape. If she could even delay them for a bit, the Doctor would surely notice she was gone by now, and he could come help.

"Faster!" one of the alien guards said, prodding her with its gun.

Rose sighed, and allowed herself to be led to the other prisoners. Clearly she wasn't going to escape that easily. Instead, she spent her time looking at where she was, to see if she could perhaps figure out where she was. The spaceship wasn't quite like anything she'd seen before, but it wasn't all that different. Relatively standard issue spaceship for inhabitants of the outer planets of the solar system Kasgarbolt.

Judging by her experiences with some of them before, she was guessing the prison was at the end of a long, twisting hallway, with several paths leading off towards dead ends to confuse prisoners. The pilot room was probably nearby the prisoners cell, but made to seem much further away, due to many more twisting hallways.

The spaceship was also probably made to seem much larger than it actually was, with the addition of many hallways twisting off into dead ends. It was a good design, and the first time Rose encountered it, she'd gotten hopelessly lost, which was why she had so carefully memorized the structure now. After several more sharp twists and turns, Rose arrived at the prisoner cells. It was a large room, with many different cells, all of them crowded with people.

"In!" the alien shouted at her, forcing her towards one of the empty cells. Rose obeyed, walking into the cell. Just before the alien closed the door, she gasped.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing off in the distance with an expression of horror on her face.

The aliens all turned around, trying to catch a glimpse of what she was pointing at. While their backs were turned, Rose carefully grabbed the keys from one of the guards, and slipped them into her pocket.

"I don't see anything," the main alien said, suspicious.

"How odd," Rose said, smiling. "It must have disappeared right when you looked."

The alien looked at her for a minute, before closing the door, setting the automatic lock. They walked off, leaving Rose trapped in a cell with what looked like hundreds of other prisoners in adjoining cells. But luckily for her, she had the keys to the cell. Now all she had to do was wait and figure out a plan for escape.

* * *

The Doctor arrived on the spaceship, having successfully traced the signal. He looked around, surveying his surroundings. He'd been on spaceships similar to this before, and he had a feeling he knew where Rose might be. He raced down the corridors, hoping Rose was in the prisoner cells, and not harmed.

"You there! Halt!"

The Doctor looked around and saw several armed guards rushing towards him. Judging by the looks of them, they were from the planet Fiorjk. Luckily, the Fiorjkians weren't a particularly violent or cruel alien race. They were a warrior race, but they had a strong code of honor. He hoped he could reason with them.

"Hello there," he said pleasantly, as if discussing the weather. "I'm the Doctor. You're Fiorjkians, right? What are you doing on Earth?"

The aliens stilled. "The Doctor?"

"Impossible," one of the others said.

"Yes, I'm the Doctor," he said. "Have you heard of me?"

"You are the reason we are here on Earth!" the main alien said. "You destroyed half our planet in the Battle of Fjoralk! We have had to seek out our ancestral ground here on Earth."

"Oh," the Doctor said, tugging nervously on his ear. "Right. I forgot about that. But you see, I wasn't really to blame. The Kalikhans would have destroyed the whole planet, had I not intervened! Half of the planet being destroyed, while certainly tragic, was unfortunately inevitable."

The Fiorjkians hissed at the mention of the Kalikhans, who were their natural enemy. The two races had a history of violence against each other.

"And besides," the Doctor added under his breath. "You tried to execute me for crimes I didn't commit, so I don't feel that sympathetic towards your cause."

"Arrest him!" the Fiorjkian in charge shouted.

"Hey, no need for such a hasty decision!" the Doctor said, putting his hands up.

The Fiorjkian guards paid no attention to his protests, and forced his hands behind his back, shoving him down the hall towards the prisoner cells.

"This is silly, really!" The Doctor protested. "There's no need for such violence."

They arrived at the cells, where the Doctor saw a very shocked Rose.

"Doctor?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I came to rescue you, but obviously it went a bit wrong," he said. "Hey no!" The aliens took his sonic screwdriver from him, and he swore loudly in a language Rose didn't recognize. Sometimes the TARDIS refused to translate the Doctor's profanity. The aliens shoved the Doctor into the cell and locked it behind him.

"Are you alright?" Rose asked him.

"I'm fine," he said. "What about you? I was so worried when you disappeared."

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't exactly intend to."

"It's okay," he said, smiling at her. "I'm sorry I've gotten you into this mess, though. I can't believe they took my sonic screwdriver from me for no reason!"

"Was it really no reason?" Rose asked. "Or was it the usual?"

"Oh?" The Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at her. "And what would 'the usual' be?"

"You know," Rose said. "You let your big mouth run off, and it gets you in trouble."

"What—that's not- I've never been so insulted in my life, Rose Tyler," the Doctor sputtered.

She smiled affectionately at him. "Anyways, don't worry about it. Luckily for you, I'm used to you getting us in trouble." She drew the keys out of her pocket, and waved them in front of his face.

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor said. "You are a genius." He kissed her briefly, before taking the keys from her and unlocking the door.

"It's a good thing you just got here," Rose said. "I was about to break out, and I know you wouldn't have wanted to miss all the action."

The Doctor half smiled and half glared at her. "Are you suggesting I get us in trouble simply for the purpose of the adventure?"

"Actually," Rose said. "That's not at all what I was suggesting. I was simply saying you like excitement and adventure. But you know, the other interpretation is pretty accurate."

The Doctor shook his head, but didn't say anything. "Come on then, let's free all the prisoners."

The other prisoners had simply been staring at them in shock, but as soon as the Doctor opened up the cells, they came pouring out.

"This way!" The Doctor shouted. He would lead them all back to the transport first, and then confront the Fiorjkians.

Slowly, the prisoners started escaping through the transport, which would put them back in the center of London, where they'd been taken.

"Come on, hurry up," the Doctor said. He could hear the Fiorjkians coming.

"The cells are open!" a Fiorjkian called. "Find the escaped prisoners, and the Doctor!"

There were only a few more prisoners left who needed to escape.

"There they are!" A Fiorjkian shouted. "Stop them!"

"Come on, hurry up," the Doctor muttered under his breath as the last few prisoners climbed through the transport. The last one went through to safety just as the Fiorjkians arrived.

"What is the meaning of this?" one of the guards said. "You must be executed for crimes against the Fiorjkians!"

"Now, hold on a minute," the Doctor said. "I know you. You are a strong, proud race. Why have you fallen so far as to try and claim Earth? Have you lost your code of honor?"

"Earth is rightfully ours," the Fiorjkian in charge said. "We had claims to it before you humans arrived."

"Well," the Doctor said. "That may be true. But Earth is claimed. These people have done nothing to you. Are you really going to kill them, just for a little piece of land? Because I assure you, humans will not go easily."

The Fiorjkian seemed to hesitate for a moment. "It doesn't matter. War has left Fiorjk devastated, and we have no choice but to force our claim on Earth."

"But think about it," the Doctor said. "There are so many undiscovered planets out there. Claim one of those, and songs will be written about the mighty Fiorjkians, who stood strong in the face of disaster, and made their own path. Your mighty race deserves that kind of praise. But try and claim Earth, and songs will be written about the pathetic Fiorjkians who tried to claim Earth and failed miserably. It's your choice."

The Fiorjkians seemed torn.

"Also, keep in mind that if you do not leave here peacefully, you will force my hand," the Doctor said. "I don't think you really want another Battle of Fjoralk."

"Very well," the Fiorjkian said after a minute. "We will leave Earth be—for now. But keep this in mind, Doctor. If we ever see you again, you will be executed for your crimes. We will let you off with a warning just this once in the spirit of this 'Christmas' you celebrate."

"I understand," the Doctor said. He put his hand on Rose's arm and steered her towards the TARDIS.

"Can we trust them?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded. "When the Fiorjkians give their word, they keep it." He unlocked the TARDIS, and headed over to the console to set their destination. As soon as Rose closed the door, he turned to her with a big grin on his face.

"I'm very glad that worked," he said. "I was completely bluffing. The Fiorjkians actually have a quite big army, and it would be hard to fight them off if they really put their mind to it."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Luckily for Earth, you're a good liar. Anyways, it's awfully nice that they only threatened to kill us at a later date. It really must be Christmas, even the aliens don't really try and kill us."

"I know," the Doctor said. "And as far as jail cells go, that one wasn't half bad. A little dank and musty, but quite roomy."

"And it didn't have torture instruments proudly displayed, like in the ones on Yilkaily," Rose added.

"Yulkeily," the Doctor corrected. "And yes, no torture instruments is generally a plus. Now, on to Faranmara!"

"Doctor," Rose sighed. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"What?" he asked, feigning innocence.

"My mum," she said. "We promised we'd spend part of Christmas with her, and she's probably gone ballistic with worry."

"But Rose," the Doctor whined. "I got you in trouble again. What if she slaps me?"

"You'll be fine," Rose said. "Now, London."

"Fine, fine," the Doctor grumbled.

* * *

They arrived at Jackie's a moment later, where Jackie was waiting anxiously.

"Rose!" she shouted, throwing herself on her daughter. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did he do anything stupid?"

"I'm fine, mum," Rose said. "I'm not hurt. And no, the Doctor wasn't any stupider than usual."

The Doctor glared at her, and she grinned in response, her tongue poking out between her teeth.  
"You!" Jackie said, turning her attention towards the Doctor. "You nearly got Rose killed! What have you got to say about yourself?"

"Er.. sorry?" he said, bracing himself for a slap. "I'm very sorry, but really, there was hardly any danger."

Jackie poked him hard in the chest. "If Rose is ever hurt, you will be _very_ sorry."

"I have no intentions of letting Rose get hurt," the Doctor said seriously.

"Hmph," Jackie said. "Anyways, it's Christmas!"

Rose smiled at her mum's change in mood.

"Come on, the presents are all wrapped, and under the tree, and there's food on the table."

They spent the next few hours opening presents, eating Jackie's famous Christmas pudding, and laughing and having fun. The Doctor and Rose had already made plans to exchange gifts on Faranmara, so it was just Rose and Jackie opening presents from each other. Finally, after lots of pleading by Jackie to stay longer, the Doctor and Rose headed off in the TARDIS.

* * *

The Doctor and Rose arrived on Faranmara right in the middle of the ice festival. It was the year 26010, and as the Doctor had promised, there was a beautiful meteor shower overhead. They set on a small ledge overlooking the city's ice festivals. Thousands of people, human and alien, were wandering about, looking at the ice sculptures.

Rose snuggled up against the Doctor's chest. "This is so beautiful."

"Not as beautiful as you," the Doctor said, kissing the top of her head.

Rose smiled. "Come on, let's exchange gifts. I'll give you mine first. I'm afraid it's not much, but… it's hard to think of what to give you."

The Doctor took the parcel from her, and opened it up to reveal a handmade scarf. "This is wonderful, Rose!"  
"I know you hardly ever wear scarves," she said. "And I'm a terrible knitter, but… what can you give a man who has all of time and space?"

"It's perfect," he said. "_You_ are perfect. Here, this is for you."

Rose took her present from him, and slowly unwrapped it. It was a small, velvet covered box. She opened it up and found a delicate diamond ring. "Doctor!" she gasped, unsure of words.

"It's… not really an engagement ring," the Doctor said. "But more of a promise. I know we haven't been together long, and I don't want to rush it, but, well… if you want to, I was thinking I'd like to have you around for awhile. And this ring symbolizes our commitment. You know, if you want to."

Rose had never seen the Doctor so unsure of himself. "It's perfect," she whispered, slipping it on. "And yes, I do want to stay with you. Forever."

"Forever," the Doctor agreed, pulling her close and kissing her. "Merry Christmas, Rose."

* * *

**AN: Please review!**


End file.
